The "bonfire of the quangos" ?!

[Hollis]

Seeing the parties seem to be fighting over themselves over who's going to get rid of these so terrible symbols of bureacracy and inefficiency I was wondering, like, what the community thinks of these things?

 

[Corax]

I prefer Fanta.

 

[Hollis]

Bully for you!

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Tell me when will you be mine
Tell me quango, quango, quango.

 

[machine cat]

i work for a quango

im sure my wife and soon-to-be-born son won't be too happy if my job is cut

 

[Hollis]

Yes so do I..though the old timers say this always happens around election time.

 

[oryx]

Quangos aren't necessarily a bad thing in principle as organisations need regulation.

It's just that some of them (the FSA with some banks, the old Housing Corporation with some failed HAs, for example) have been guilty of 'regulatory failure' where they have missed things or not acted in time*, so they need to sharpen their act and to work effectively.

*that's a bit of an understatement in the banks' case!

 

[Corax]

It's a bit like saying that 'organisations' are a bad thing. Fucking broad term that takes in a huge range. More nonsensical soundbite shite from our ruling masters.

 

[Giles]

When politicians perceive that there is a "problem" that needs solving, setting up a new and separate organisation with a "chief" or "Tsar", a new logo and a new office makes it look like they are "doing something".

Then, five or more years down the line, the rival politicians point out that they have now created 573 of these new bodies, and each one had to have a new office, high-paid boss, logo, letterhead, web site that nobody looks at, and that all of these have cost 37 Squillion pounds.

So, they then have a "bonfire" (subject to a licence from the B.R.A - the Bonfires Regulatory Authority, of course).

Repeat until the sun goes cold........

Giles..

 

[tbaldwin]

Not quite sure what a quango is?
But the problem is that far too much public money is wasted on bureacracy and not spent on things that are of practical help.
Far too much money is spent on writing and producing strategy documents and not enough on really making a difference to disdavantaged or not so disadvantaged people.
The huge increase in spending under new labour has been largely wasted becuase it was given to people who really have little interest in actually making a difference.

 

[Steve Booth]

Part of the danger here is the lack of democratic control. Some area of public policy is farmed off to an office or even sort of half privatised. The 'Child Support Agency' for example of fond memory. The Identity Card quango will be one of them. Usually, it doesn't work, and its sometimes out of control. Some of these Quangoes are sinister - like the 'Government Office of the North West'. It's a way of hiding the government, and somewhere deep down inside these dark towers, you can bank on it, they're up to no good.....

 

[untethered]

Quangos aren't a problem per se but big government is. Whether the bloat is in central government departments, quangos, nationalised industries or local government it should be eliminated as soon as possible.

 

[Clint Iguana]

They were all burnt in wales a few years ago and absorbed into the assembly. Since then ex-quango employees have been right royally shafted and no-one knows who is doing what anymore.

 

[Hollis]

The huge increase in spending under new labour has been largely wasted becuase it was given to people who really have little interest in actually making a difference.

Really? If there's one thing that has impressed me about where i work (and there aren't necessarily many), its how passionate the people are about what they're doing. Particularly when you consider the work would otherwise be farmed out to private sector organisations, with I suspect, far less interest, in what the work involved.

 

[London_Calling]

I'm always a little wary. I remember when M.H.Thatcher decided to rid us all of "red tape" and that ended, in among other things, BSE. Back in the day, sensible people thought the quango in question was a good idea with reason, even if that reason is now a little obscured by short-term political convenience.

 

[toblerone3]

Bombfire will happen in 2010. IMO.

Surely there are good quangos and bad quangos. But which ones?

FSA (?) NPC (?) OPEC (?)

Definetely keep OPEC I think.

 

[Giles]

I'm always a little wary. I remember when M.H.Thatcher decided to rid us all of "red tape" and that ended, in among other things, BSE. Back in the day, sensible people thought the quango in question was a good idea with reason, even if that reason is now a little obscured by short-term political convenience.

I don't think you can put BSE down to a lack of bureaucrats.

What happened was that greedy farmers and farm feed suppliers decided that it was a sensible thing to start feeding an essentially vegetarian animal (a cow) with ground-up bits of dead animal, a decision so stupid I cannot believe that they did it.

I don't believe that had a quango (Ofcow?) existed, that they would have prevented this.

It was one of those things that no-one had actually thought of doing, so they just did, and the consequences only became clear some while later.

Wouldn't have worked if people had KNOWN what they were doing, because most people would have said "YUK" to the thought of it, quite rightly.

Giles..

 

[toblerone3]

don't talk about BSE people

What's the most ridiculous quango then? What should be the first Qango up against the wall?